Keeper'n Me

This book is deceptive in a way. It starts off like a story of someone trying to find his way, and it sort of is, but I think it's more accurate to say it's about a guy who found his way and how he walks the path. 

The story is broken into four parts. In the first, Garnet Raven is reunited with his family in White Dog and decides to stay and see if the Anishinabe way is what he's been missing in his life. And from there... it's him learning more. About himself, his family, his community, his people, his history, his land, his culture. The narrative passes between Garnet and Keeper, his teacher and friend, almost as if they're recounting the story to us around a campfire. 

This book places a focus on Indigenous culture in a way I've never seen written down before. Many books I read talk about the damage to Indigenous culture through government policies, the resistance and fight to keep the culture alive, modern resurgence in various ways, the paths forward for culture and governance... But Keeper'n Me is about the old ways. The way the Anishinabe lived before contact. And about how those ways are still important today, and about how they can shift to match the ways life has changed today. Rather than lamenting the state of the world, it celebrates that there is so much to be learned in the old ways and that people like Garnet learning these ways can lift up a whole community in the process.

This book is, even with darker moments and sad tales, a celebration of Indigenous culture in a way I've never seen before. And I love it.